Bradley Manning’s attorney posted a Thank You note on his defense blog today. Here is the comment I made there:

Beware of being blindsided in this trial by the “Separate Society” BS of Parker v Levy. If this tribunal convicts it will have been a sham, as Mr. Obama has already said, pre-trial, that Manning was guilty – “He broke the law.”

Because Mr. Obama said this while acting as President – the top of the Chain of Command for the “Separate Society”; a President must actually issue a Pardon for Manning, seems to me.

Here is a piece I wrote in 2011, “Pardon Bradley Manning Mr. Obama” http://bit.ly/PardonBrad It includes audio of both the final arguments and the reading of the verdict in Parker v Levy, which held that a US Military Officers did not enjoy the Free Speech protections of the First Amendment because the military was – they held – a “Separate Society” and it’s members had their own unique judiciary under the UCMJ.

Manning must be pardoned. And Parker v Levy must be overturned. In my opinion nothing less will undo the damage of how the executive branch has behaved towards Manning, particularly during his tenure at Quantico.

Building Asset-Based Market Infrastructure Best Alternative for Global Economy

(Updated 102408 – Formatting)

(RePosted 110110)

DJIA 9 October 2008

Few doubt that the collapse of the world economy will be a Game Changer. But the change needed is to a new game – a new infrastructure. Not a set of minor changes to the same game.

What is the “game?” The current model, which has gone down like a house of cards in a stiff breeze, is one tilted towards the interests of corporations, governments, and against those of the Individual. It is based on various gradations of slavery, wage-slavery, consumerism predicated on freely available credit at usuriousrates, predatory lending practices against victims disarmed by law, and perpetual debt. We have created a debt-based global political economy, not an asset and equity based model.

Yet a non-debt based economic system is what we, the Individual Humans who collectively comprise the global economy, need the most.

We need to base our 21st Century political economies on equity, and assets. Debt is a tool to grow equity and assets, not a substitute for it. (Unless You are designing a slavery or permanent indentured sort of system. It’s tougher to do that in a civil democracy. And bear in mind the sort of Individually held asset and equities basis of global political economy hypothesised here is not the same as asset-egalitarianism. It merely alludes to a reworking of the global financial system in a way that moves the advantage to the Individual accumulation of wealth over the current emphasis and advantage accorded to the corporate concentration of wealth.)

“No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.”

The past three weeks have seen the front line dominoes tumble as the jury-rigged infrastructure of perma-debt collapsed before the eyes of those reputed to for years to be the smartest and boldest “risk takers” leading the global economy. The most rabid force for de-regulation, the US Republican Party led by George W. Bush, is winding up its occupation of the Oval Office by nationalising the most pivotal parts of the US Banking System.

One by one, the remaining investment institutions have queued up for a government bailout that gives governments an equity stake.

Of course, in the US these massive infusions of government cash and guarantees are backed by the Treasury – which means borrowing from other nations, principally China. And the repayment of this new debt will naturally fall on the US taxpayer, absent any serious reform.

LIBOR and the TED Spread are only immediate indicators of the credit market’s liquidity. The larger issue of infrastructure reform needs to consider how to build an asset-based, as opposed to debt-driven, political economy. And that means encouraging the accumulation of assets and equities by Individuals, as opposed to corporations. This impacts the structure and regulation of credit markets.

International leaders participating in the upcoming series of summits need to pay particularly meticulous attention to this.

For unless they obey the current inflection point and switch the game over to an asset-backed model of consumer spending, no amount of government intervention will preserve the current debt-driven model based on cannibalised captive markets.

Bubble Gum, Spit, and String

Such efforts as purchasing toxic assets, and injecting captial into the banks are short term patches of bubble gum, spit and string, and I surely hope our international leaders realise that. There are already signs from the banks such injections, alone, won’t work. The upcoming series of economic summits needs to focus on establishing a long term market model that honestly gives Individual Citizens a fair shake, and a more prominent role as stakeholder in the global system.

In the recent past I have been pessimistic about the real willingness of our leaders to address the root causes of this crisis. On September 26, before the bailout was passed, in an email to Congress, I asked “Where is the call for an international summit with our WTO trading partners, particularly China?”

But the pressure on the US by international leaders for it’s participation in a series of summits to address the current crisis in the economy gives me cause to reconsider my cynicism.

In this sort of environment, consumer spending drives everything. Like Love, it makes the world go ’round. Henry Blodget did a lucid piece the other day on ClusterStock, entitled “US Consumers are Broke.” I highly recommend it.

Equity/Asset Based Games vs Debt Games

If our global economic system threatens to collapse, as it is, and if consumer spending (particularly US consumer spending) is the engine; then we need to pay particularly close attention to the infrastructure changes our international leaders will try to design to address the crisis.

We don’t need to merely patch up the existing debt-based paradigm, except on the shortest term. What we need to do is change the game to an asset and equity basis.

Consumer Credit should no longer be used as an Orwellian cyber-leash on the populace. Instead, in building an asset-based market, the Individual owns and excercises real and legally enforceable control over their credit and other financial information. The role for reporting agencies are transformed to data services competing to be the delivery agent for the Individual. That means a much more direct relationship with those who would access that information – which would no longer be the sort of commercial product that automatically becomes subject to data mining.

Real protections against predatory lending instruments need to be instituted – that means no more Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs), no more Balloon Payment, or Interest Only, or so-called option-ARMs.

That also means a cap on credit card rates, and a prohibition of unilateral rate changes based on the consumer’s account status with any other lender. So one’s credit card rate doesn’t suddenly jump from 8 to 62 percent because you forgot to pay the electric bill last month – a bill you never pay with that credit card. But the card company data mines your payment stream, sees the omission, and cranks up the rate. Such behavior tends to gut the future ability of the account to maintain a credit relationship, and is thus cannibalistic of it’s own market.

This is what has happened to the US Consumer in this economic game of debt. This is why the US Consumer is broke. This is why the US Consumer is wary of credit, mortgage, and investment instruments tilted against them. Any serious infrastructural reform that will last must address these very real concerns, and not just give them lip service.

Money To Be Made- More Reliably in Asset Based Economy

If US consumer spending has been such a great engine for growth and expansion in international trade, think of what a robust middle class would mean when combining the consumer spending of the US, China, India, and the EU. In an international monetary system driven by the Individual accumulation of wealth, the emergence of a solid middle class would be an increasingly strong economic engine. Perhaps international leaders should consider flattening the economic landscape in their upcoming efforts to build a newer, more resilient global economic system. Rules and regulations should be guided by the express intent to enable and build up individual assets and equities, as opposed to corporate debt.

We must abolish the current idea of “minimum” wage and migrate to the concept of the Living Wage, indexed to the actual cost of living.

We need to encourage the invention of financial instruments for Individuals which give them certain and distinct advantages over existing corporate institutions, as a safeguard of their ability to accumulate wealth and contribute to the engine of asset and equity based consumer spending. Predatory corporate and financial instruments are a certain death to such aims.

This means eliminating all taxes on personal income, personal savings and investments, to encourage and facilitate the accumulation of wealth regardless of class.

This will mean not just more banking regulation and tighter supervision over the mortgage and derivatives markets, but increases in wages across the board, across the world, in all countries participating in this restructuring.

In a global political economy that properly uses debt as just another tool to facilitate the building up of the actual wealth of the People, and not as a centerpiece to drive markets, the health and robust growth of a more reliable form of Consumer Spending is ensured.

That’s all I have time to write for this weekend. More later. Until then, the Fabulous O’Jays!

Bradley Manning is a good Soldier who does not obey unlawful orders. If he actually leaked anything it was in fulfillment of his Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, domestic and foreign.

President Obama, do You seriously want to try to expand Parker v Levy [1][2][3]and the “Separate Society” of UCMJ in this climate? Sure, maybe You can get SCOTUS to go along, but if You do You may have a revolt. And if SCOTUS doesn’t go along You risk the bullshit decision of Parker v Levy being overturned.

Julian Assange is a spokesman and advisory board member of WikiLeaks, a transparency website whose mission is to “open governments” and expose human rights abuses. It has a core focus on protecting dissidents, whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and bloggers who face state threats, and it largely operates by publishing leaks of sensitive documents.

Winners of Amnesty International’s 2009 Media Award for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya, Assange and WikiLeaks have recently launched www.collateralmurder.com, a website that hosts a leaked video of U.S. military forces in Iraq apparently slaying over a dozen people indiscriminately.

In his speech, Assange chooses to focus specifically on WikiLeaks’s work against censorship and human rights abuses committed by Western governments. Paraphrasing Orwell, Assange explains that he who controls today’s internet servers controls the intellectual record of mankind.

He warns us that Western governments, large corporations, and certain wealthy individuals are increasingly able and increasingly trying to remove material permanently from the historical record using sophisticated methods.

Assange reviews WikiLeaks’s work in uncovering human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo, and discusses the dangerous irony in the U.S. military’s conduct as it decorates its detention centers with “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” signs.

If the West doesn’t reverse its course of increased censorship and rights abuses, Assange warns, it will lose all of the ideals that it once stood for.

The Pentagon position means the United States government will not lift a finger to protect our Friends on the ground in Afghanistan. Not if it means admitting the US no longer has the controlling say in what shall be released, and not released. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” – Ecclesiastes 1:1

Also, Robert Gibbs, the current White House Press Secretary has time to bash the left, the People who put him and his boss, Mister Obama, in their jobs. But there is no time to answer this question: Is it more important to capture Osama Bin Laden, or to detain and “question” Julian Assange and members of the Wikileaks Team?

I guess Mister Obama’s pressuring other countries to hassle and prosecute and detain and extradite Assange answers that question. Bin Laden isn’t as important a target for the US as Wikileaks is at the moment.

[Note: I am adopting the convention that anyone who sits in the Oval Office who does NOT renounce PATRIOT Act sanctioned Bush era policies of assassination, indefinite detention without charges, torture, due process, habeas corpus, does not deserve the honorific “Mr. President.” If the current occupant will not take Murder off the table, extraordinary rendition – kidnapping off the table, torture off the table … then he no longer can lay claim to being “Mr. President.” Mr. President enforces the law. Mr. President protects whistleblowers. By his actions to date, Mister Obama does not. Mr. Bush, who was ordained by the Supreme Court, never did deserve the honorific.]

I started a petition to Mister Obama to refrain from killing, kidnapping, or torturing anyone from Wikileaks. It’s here: http://act.ly/2a2

The Afghan War Logs published by Wikileaks is one of the biggest leaks in the history of US military. The logs consists of 91,731 documents which reveal that hundreds of civilians have been killed by coalition troops in Afghanistan.

Last Thursday I thought I’d ask the White House a simple question. Is it more important to capture Osama Bin Laden, or to detain and “question” (under the PATRIOT Act, we all know what that can mean.) Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

I thought this was a no brainer. How wrong, I suppose, I was. At least, for the White House. The decision on what may be declassified has been removed from the Executive Branch of the United States (or any) government, and it seems the Obama administration has yet to figure out how to respond, aside from scheming to capture / detain / or otherwise incarcerate Julian Assange, so that he may be interrogated. With, or Without Due Process. But really now, Patriots! In secret?

Not Bloody Likely.

An absence of answers from the White House Press Office apparently means what? Corking-up WikiLeaks is more important than stopping Al Qaeda?

On Friday morning, I called the White House Press Office again, and repeated that question, and another. I spotted Assange’s interview with abcnews.au wherein he asserted the White House had been approached by the New York Times on behalf of the media partnership, and asked if they would help remove names of our Afghan Friends. The White house “declined.”

I asked, “Is this True?”

Since then, silence.

Seriously. The White House declined an opportunity to protect our “assets”?

Once again, I ask. For the fourth (4th) time since last Thursday 07/29/10:

Which is a greater priority for the White House and Pentagon – capturing Osama Bin Laden, or detaining and “questioning” Julian Assange?

Once again, I ask. For the third (3rd) time since last Friday 07/30/10:

Is it true the White House declined to help the media partnership of NYT/Guardian/DerSpiegel/WikiLeaks to scrub the names of our Human Resources from the War Diaries as part of their Harm Minimisation?

Every single time I have contacted the White House Press Office (“media affairs”) I have identified myself, given a phone number, email address, and identified the blog I publish. Every single time I have been assured You will “get back” to me.

You have not.

Is it because I run a blog, and the White House does not think that merits a response?

Have I received no response because the White House does not think I am qualified as a journalist? Let me assure You, I was trained in Print, Broadcast, and Photo Journalism by the Department of Defense Information School. I served on active duty as an Army Journalist. The paper I worked on won numerous awards during my tenure there.

Please respond to these questions with answers.

As I mentioned this morning when I called around 0715hrs, my headline for my next post on Scribal Thrum will be something like